Prof and Students Take on Computer Intruders in Classified Project

The next-generation Internet still could be years down the road for most of the world. But it has been Professor James Early’s domain for a decade.

He’s become such an expert in this realm, the U.S. Air Force has banked about $200,000 on him over three years to determine how to close security holes even before they open.

The Air Force, and the rest of the military, has been moving into the much more secure world of the next Internet protocol—Internet Protocol Version 6, or IPv6—for several years. Last year, Eglin Air Force Base in Florida piloted for the rest of the service the switch of its computer infrastructure to IPv6 from IPv4, the world’s standard for more than 25 years.

But Early, an assistant professor of computer science and software engineering, says that even with more dependable cyberspace connectivity, there are hostiles aplenty. “I can safely tell you there is no protocol that’s flawless,” said Early, who has taught in the computer science department since 2007.

Professor, students work together on classified project

It is Early’s job, in the dry language of a grant that’s largely classified, to “adapt new protocols to meet the needs of the Air Force.”

In more direct terms, this means fighting known and future Internet intruders that could threaten everything from combat missions to mundane communications tasks.

“It’s important work,” says Early, who repeatedly draws the line on what he can and can’t say about his Air Force work. Literally, it’s a matter of national security—picture what could happen in battle if there were a communications breach.

The professor spent the summer at the Air Force Research Laboratory in nearby Rome with two software engineering students, Nick Poorman ’11 and Karl Miller ’11. They continue the project on campus and report regularly to Kamal Jabbour, the Rome lab’s senior scientist for computer security.

Poorman and Miller, both junior computer science majors, speak glowingly about the chance to work on such a project with their professor. “The opportunity to work in Rome is just amazing,” says Poorman, of Baldwinsville, who said opportunities for undergraduates to do research with faculty influenced his choice of college.

Long-ago attack helps inspire career

Their professor traces his own avid interest in thwarting cyber-attacks to Eugene “Spaf” Spafford, one of Early’s doctoral advisers at Purdue University. Spafford was in the first wave of computer engineers to step forward after a Syracusan, Robert T. Morris, launched a worm in 1988 that caused millions of dollars’ worth of down time and damage to a federal computer network.

“Spaf is one of the most pre-eminent experts on information security in the world,” says Early. Spafford and another of Early’s advisers, Carla Brodley, now at Tufts University and an expert in machine learning—“teaching” computers sets of rules—inspired Early to pioneer “behavioral authentication.”

In a nutshell, when one computer attempts to communicate with another, deviation in past behavior of that computer or network “signals that you need to take action in some way,” he says.

— Public affairs byline

PHOTO CAPTION:

Students Karl Miller ’11, foreground, and Nicholas Poorman ’11, right, work with computer science assistant professor James Early to demonstrate part of the header for files under the next-generation protocol for exchanging files over the Internet.